Advanced Television

Italian media market worth €14.75bn

July 13, 2018

From Branislav Pekic in Rome

The Italian media sector in 2017 achieved a turnover of €14.75 billion, down 0.9 per cent year-on-year, with TV and radio contributing €8.95 billion (-2 per cent).

In the TV segment, revenues from free-to-air TV reached €4.93 billion (-3.5 per cent), while pay-TV was worth €3.38 billion (-0.2 per cent), the later dominated by Sky Italia.

However, according to the Annual Report of Italy’s Communications Authority (AgCom), the TV sector remains concentrated, with the three leading players accounting for nearly 90 per cent of the overall resources.

The market leader is 21st Century Fox/Sky Italia with a 33 per cent share (+1 per cent); followed by RAI with 28 per cent (-1.5 per cent); and Fininvest/Mediaset with 28 per cent (no change). Way behind them are Discovery with 2.7 per cent and Cairo Communication with 1.5 per cent.

An estimated 3 million Italians routinely watch TV via streaming (the figure was at 3.8 million in May 2018), while up to 12 million download TV content.

Overall advertising revenue amounted to €7.36 billion in 2017, of which TV accounted for nearly half (€3.33 billion), down by 1.7 per cent year-on-year. Internet advertising grew the most (+12.8 per cent) to €2.20 billion.

Broadband penetration at end-2017 reached 27.4 per cent of the population and 63.9 per cent of households. Ultra-high speed broadband is available to only 7.5 per cent of the population and 17.4 per cent of Italian families.

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